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Academia
Intellectual Property |Nature:/Else2018/Major publishers sue ResearchGate over copyright infringement> :"Elsevier and the American Chemical Society (ACS) say that the ResearchGate website violates US copyright law by making articles in their journals freely available. The two publishers filed the claim with the United States District Court for the District of Maryland on 2 October." Criticism 12 Guidelines for Surviving Science… - Pacific SouthEast By Adam Micolich, January 2, 2015 "6. Make sure you have anti- role models too: Lots of people talk about mentors and role models, few talk about the exact opposite. Look carefully, many people who on the surface look respected by the community and highly successful are held in absolute contempt by the people who work with or for them. Watch carefully, they are everywhere. Do what ever you can to not become like them; they will teach you more lessons than any positive role-model or mentor ever can. Just because someone has outstanding research metrics, doesn’t mean they’re worthy of your respect. Great people are worthy of respect, some of them also have great research metrics, some don’t." "7. Be an all-rounder: A true academic/professor cares about all parts of the job, not just the research. Put effort into your teaching, public engagement and admin tasks, no matter how much it seems your employer only values you for your research metrics alone. You will be far happier for it because you will feel valued even when your research career is at a low point (these inevitably come sometimes). The appreciation of your students or the public is worth far more than any accolade or paper. If all you do is work to receive attention from elitists and the little ‘old boys clubs’ they create, you are bound for a life of unhappiness." "And as a bonus, since I always like to break the rules… 13. Try to give more than you take: There’s too much focus in science on only doing the things that directly benefit you. Arsehole referees say things like “the applicant has too many papers where he’s neither first nor last author, I’m ignoring these as clearly they are negligible contributions” (real review on one of my grant proposals); people will squabble over authorship and control of projects as a result, some will even shaft one another. You will meet people who will shirk their refereeing responsibilities or admin responsibilities or other responsibilities to try and get ahead. Forget this, because if you behave just like this, you are part of perpetuating the toxic culture of science rather than fixing it. Give your all to all you can (subject to Rule 1 of course), help more junior colleagues as much as possible, they are the future. Just generally chip in when you can. The world of science only gets better if more of us do this. Trying to out-bastard the bastards just makes the world worse." Physchosis: How Academia Destroys Your Mental Health. - Pacific SouthEast By Adam Micolich, April 6, 2016 "3. We’ve perverted all the adjectives to the limit: You know you’re an academic when someone says something is pretty good, and you immediately know that’s code for mediocre or even crap. Good is terrible. Excellent is barely acceptable. Outstanding is good but rarely achieved. All through the culture you keep having these perverted objectives thrown at you — all the infrastructure needs to be world-class, the ‘pursuit of excellence’ is persistent and all pervasive. Journals and awards and universities can’t just be, they have to be prestigious or top-ranked. The superlatives are endless and excessive and they ultimately destroy your ability to retain perspective.In many ways, it’s like having advertisements for luxury goods shoved in your face on a daily basis. Before long, your nice old Seiko watch looks like total junk in comparison. With advertising, keeping consumers in a persistent state of dissatisfaction keeps them spending. In academia, it seems as though keeping academics in a persistent state of self-dissatisfaction and ‘underachievement’ keeps them working longer hours for and with less. The side effect in both cases is destructive mentally." "Before long, you find yourself losing your sense of humour, losing your ability to relate to people, losing your ability to relax and not freak out in the fear of what more will land on your plate when someone knocks on the door or the phone rings. You find yourself slinking around the corridor, hoping no one stops you. You find yourself not listening to conversations because your brain is processing your to-do list, or not listening in talks and meetings because you’re on your laptop editing proposal text or writing an email or doing some ridiculous admin task. You find yourself avoiding holidays or activities with family and friends because you need to get job X done or deadline Y is approaching. You work on your down time, hell, you work all the time. Gradually you become a milder version of the monster that gets created in a system where the only thing that matters is your achievements, metrics and cv. It destroys you as a person and makes you start hating your job and hating your life. When you add it all up, what you have is the perfect recipe for destroyed people, hollowed out souls who are nothing but work, people who should love their job but spend many days on the edge of falling to pieces, feeling like they’re worthless, deeply suspicious of their colleagues and how they might shaft them in the relentless competition for acknowledgement, which is designed by the system to be the only thing that provides job satisfaction. It’s the perfect recipe for mental dysfunction. How to fix it? That’s harder and might be for another time…" Lack of Diversity https://wearyourvoicemag.com/health/tips-for-surviving-academia-as-a-queer-person-of-color "Institutions of higher education in the United States have never been particularly hospitable to women, less so to women of color, and even less so to queer women, trans, and non-binary people of color. While we’ve made some progress in terms of lowering access barriers for queer and trans people of color, there are still many aspects of life in academia—whether you are in a graduate program or working as a lecturer or faculty member—that make surviving in the ivory tower significantly more challenging if you are not a cis man, and you are not white. At its core, academia in the United States is still a white supremacist institution that was not made with us in mind." "In graduate school, you’ll encounter a toxic work culture, in which people try to prove their worth by demonstrating a single-minded dedication to their field, their project, their work, etc. to the point of excluding any other interests or hobbies. While this may make you look like a very “serious” and “committed” scholar, it doesn’t actually work. People who do this burn out very quickly. They develop chronic health problems and/or have nervous breakdowns. You are allowed to have multiple identities and interests that don’t revolve solely around your academic work, and in fact, allowing yourself to maintain a sense of self outside of the ivory tower will be key to your overall well-being." Category:Science